A FISHERMAN'S

boom in the same way. They have, it seems, just to drag it some way down the river before it broke It was, however, at last discovered and secured, and the catch was of sufficient magnitude to ensure a supply of fish, notwithstanding the logs.

SKETCHES IN NORWAY AND SWEDEN. broken up the contents of one of these booms above It will take three days to clear it out, and another day for the straggling pieces.'

66

BY THE REV. HENRY NEWLAND.

"Brown Dwarf, that o'er the moorland strays,
Thy name to Keeldar tell,'

The Brown Man of the Moors who stays
Beneath the heather bell."

us.

"Whew!" said the Captain, "three blessed days taken from the sum of our lives; what on earth is to be done!"

"Stop a minute," said the Captain, as the boats' heads were put up the stream on their return · "we have not got all the Längref yet, I am sure; I sco another fish; just pull across that ripple, Parson, a few yards below the end of that stranded log. Yes, to be sure it is, and a salmon, too, and as dead as

'Well," said the Parson, "that is exactly what we must see about, for it is quite certain that there is nothing to be done on the water. Before I began grumbling I sent off Torkel to look for Birger-for | Harry the Eighth. Steady there; hold water;" and we must hold a council of war upon it. O! there is Birger," said he, as they crossed the little rise which forms the head of the Aal Foss, and came in sight of the camp and the river below it, "Torkel must have missed him."

"Hallo!" said Birger, who was with Piersen in

HALLO! what is the matter now?" said the Captain, who had been out with his gun that morning, and on his return caught sight of the Parson sitting disconsolate on the river's bank. By the waters of Torjedahl we sat down and wept. "What has gone wrong?" "Why, everything has gone wrong," said the Par- one of the boats, fishing up with his boat-hook the back line of the Längref, and apparently he made son peevishly, "look at my line." an awful mess of it-"Hallo there! get another boat and come and help me, these baulks have played Old Scratch with the Längref; it has made a goodly catch, too, last night, as far as I can see, but we want more help to get it in."

"You do seem to have lost your casting line, certainly."

"Yes, I have, and half my reel line beside." "Very tinkerish, I dare say, but do not grieve over it; put on a new one and hold your tongue about it; no one saw you, and I promise not to tell.”

"How can you be so absurd?" said the Parson, “look at the river, and tell me how we are to fish that; just look at those baulks of timber floating all over it. I had on as fine a fish as ever I saw in my life, five-and-twenty pounds if he was an ounce, when down came these logs, and one of them takes my reel line with sixty yards out and cuts it right in the middle."

"Well, that is provoking," said the Captain, enough to make a saint swear, let alone a parson; but, hang it, man, it is only once in the way. Come along, do not look behind you, I am in a hurry to be at it myself, I came home on purpose, I was ashamed to waste so glorious a fishing day as this in the field." "That is just the thing that annoys me," said the Parson; "it is, as you say, a most lovely fishing day, I never saw a more promising one, and I have just heard that these logs will take three days floating by at the very least, and while they are on the river I defy the best fisherman in all England to land anything bigger than a graul.”

Why," said the Captain, "have the scoundrels been cutting a whole forest!"

The Parson had the discretion to keep his own counsel, but the fact was, it was he who was the cause both of the abundant catch and of the present trouble. The small eels had been plaguing them for some nights successively by sucking off and nibbling to pieces baits which they were too small to swallow, and thus preventing the larger fish from getting at them. The Parson had seen this and had set his wits to work to circumvent them. By attaching corks to the back line he had floated the hooks above the reach of the eels, which he knew would never venture far from the bottom, while pike, gös, id, perch, the larger cels, and occasionally even trout, would take the floating bait more readily when they found it in mid water.

This would have done exceedingly well had he looked at it early in the morning; that, however, he had not exactly forgotten, but had neglected to do. Time was precious, and he was unwilling to waste it on hauling the Längref. Jacob, whose business it was to haul it, had been sent down to Christiansand on the preceding day with two of the boatmen for supplies, and had not yet returned; and the Parson, holding his tongue about his experi"This is what Torkel tells me," said the Parson, ment, and proposing to himself the pleasure of "he says that in the winter they cut their confounded hauling the Langref when the mid-day sun should firs, and when the snow is on the ground they just be too hot for salmon-fishing, had gone out early square them, haul them down to the river or its with his two-handed rod. In the meanwhile, the tributaries, where they leave them to take care of baulks had come down, and the very first of them, themselves, and when the ice melts in the spring catching the centre of the floating bight, had cut it down come the trees with it. But there are three or in two, and had thus permitted the whole of the four lakes, it seems, through which this river passes- Parson's great catch of fish to entangle themselves that, by-the-by, is the reason why it is so clear, and, as the baulks would be drifting all manner of ways when they got into these lakes and would get stranded on the shores instead of going down the stream, they make what they call a boom at or near the mouth of the river, that is to say, they chain together a number of baulk end-ways and moor them in a bight across the river, so that they catch every thing that floats. Here they get hold of the loose baulks, make them into rafts, and navigate them along the lakes, launching them again into the river at the other end, and catching them again at the next

at their pleasure.

he made a rake for the line with his boat-hook.
"Why, what have we got here? It is much too
fine for the Längref. As I live, it is your own line.
To be sure; here it runs. Steady! Let me get a
hold of it with my hand, it may not be hitched in
the woed firmly, and if it slips we shall lose it
entirely. That will do: all right. That must be
the log that broke you; it must have stranded here
after coming down the Aal Foss, with the fish still
on it--and--hurrah! here is the fish all safe—and,
say, Parson, remarkably fine fish it is, certainly!
not quite twenty-five pounds though”—holding up
the fish by the tail, and measuring it against his
own leg; for his trowsers were marked with inches
from the pocket button downwards; a yard measure
having been stitched on the seam.
such a thing as a steelyard, have you?”
The Parson, laughing, rather confusedly though,
produced from his slip pocket the required instru-

I

ment.

"You have not

"Ah! I thought so, ten pounds and a half; the biggest fish always do get away, that is certain, especially if they are not caught again; it is a thouI have spoilt sand pities I put my eyes on this one. your story!"

"Well, well," said the Parson, "if you have spoilt my story, you have made a good one for yourself, so take the other oar, and let us pull for the camp."

"Birger," said the Captain, when the boats had been made fast, and the spoils left in the charge of Pierson, "Torkel has been telling the Parson that we are to have three days of these logs. If the rascal speaks the truth, what is to be done by us fishermen ?"

"The rascal does speak the truth in this instance, I. will be bound for it," said Birger; "he knows the river well, and besides, it is what they do on every river in Norway that is deep enough to float a baulk."

"What is to be done, then? There is no fishing

on the river while this is going on."

"I will tell you what we can do," said Birger; two or three days ago, that day when I returned to the camp so late, if you remember, I told you that I had fallen in with a lonely lake in the course It was these disjecta membra that Birger was of my rambles. There was a boat there belonging busying himself about; the task was not an easy to a sœter in the neighborhood which Pierson knew one, and if it were, the guardsman was not alto- of, and I missed a beautiful chance at a flight of gether a proficient. But even when the reinforce- ducks. However, that is neither here nor there; ment arrived, there was nothing to be done beyond the people at the sæter told me that the great lake lifting the whole tangle bodily into the boat, releas- char was to be found there; so the next day I sent ing the fish from the hooks, and then, partly by Pierson, who understands laying lines if he does not patience, partly by a liberal use of the knife, to get fly-fishing, to set some trimmers for them. I vote out the tangle on shore. The further half gave we shoot our way to the lake, look at these lines, them the most trouble to find; it had been moored get another crack at the ducks, and make our way to to a stone, and the back line had been strong enough the Toftdahl (which, if the map is to be trusted,

'Bravo, Birger," said the Captain, "a very promising plan, and here in good time comes Commissary General Jacob with the supplies. I see his boat just over that point, entangled among a lump of logs. I vote we take him with us; no man makes such coffee. I have not had a cup worth drinking since you sent him down the river."

said the Captain," he likes better to hear the lark was not the vestige of a path, that is to say, a path
sing than the mouse squeak."
leading to any place to which he could possibly
"I like clean heather better than dirty sheep-want to go. The grass was particularly good and
skins," said the Parson.
sweet there, and sheep and cows are intensely con.
"And musquitoes better than fleas," added theservative in their idiosyncracy; so stoutly had they
Captain.
kept up the principle of stare super antiquas vias,
"Bother the musquitoes, I did not think of that the appearance was as if the whole region was
them."*
thickly inhabited and intersected with foot-paths in
every direction, while every animal that helps to
make them rings its own individual bell and carries
its own individual brand, but pastures in uncon-
trolled liberty. A cow is a very good guide to a lost
man, for, if he has patience to wait till evening, she
is sure to feed her way to the sæter to be milked;
but wo to the man who puts his trust in bullocks or
in sheep; they feed at ease and roam at pleasure,
till the frosts and snows of approaching winter bring
them home to the fold, the stall, and the salting-tub.

"They will soon remind you," said Birger, "if we happen to encamp near standing water." And he went on packing his knapsack to the tune of "Should auld acquaintance be forgot," which he whistled with

"You cannot take the poor fellow a long march to-day," said the Parson, considerately, "he has just been pulling up the stream from Christian-considerable taste and skill.† sand."

"He pull!" said the Captain; "is that all you know of Jacob? I will venture to say he has not pulled a stroke since he started; look at the rascal, how he lolls at his ease with his legs over the hamper, while the men are half in the water struggling their way through the obstacles."

"I see the scamp," said the Parson; "upon my word, he puts me in mind of what the nigger observed on landing in England; man work, horse work, ox work, everything work, pig the only gentleman; Jacob is the only gentleman in our expedition."

"I admire that man," said Birger; "that is the true practical philosophy, never to do anything for yourself if you can get other people to do it for you. But I think those fellows had better make haste about it. I have known such a hitch of timber as that bridge the whole river from side to side in ten minutes; they accumulate very rapidly when they once take ground-ah! there goes the boat free; all right; but I certainly began to tremble for my provisions."

Well, then, we will take gentleman Jacob," said the Captain, "I cannot give up my coffee."

Arrangements such as these are soon made; the three boatmen were left in charge of the camp, with full permission to get as drunk as they pleased; and before Jacob had well stretched his legs, which had been cramped in the boat, he was stretching them on the mountain side, marching a good way in the rear of the party, and grumbling as he marched.

The mountains, which all the way from Christiansand hem in the river, so that not even a goat can travel along its banks, at Mosse Eurd and Wigeland recede on both sides, forming a sort of basin; and here, in a great measure, they lose their abrupt and perpendicular character. Close by the water side, there are a hundred or two of acres of inclosed ground comparatively flat, and either arable or meadow; not by any means in a ring fence, but spots cribbed here and there from the field, which looks more like a gentleman's park than anything else, with these little paddocks fenced out of it. The houses, too, are quite the picturesque houses that gentlemen in England ornament their estate with, so that the untidy fences seemed altogether out of character with the scenery. What one would look for here is the neat park palings of England, or its trim quickset hedges.

Beyond this, the ground becomes more broken and wooded, but without losing its parkish character; it is something like the forest grounds of the

"I think so," said Birger, "we will leave our three boatmen here in charge of the camp; Tom, Torkel, and Pierson can carry the fishing rods and our knapsacks, which we must pack in light march-South Downs in England, only broken into detached ing order. Jacob shall provide for the kitchen, and hills and deep rises, with occasionally a bare ridge we will each of us take a day's provisions in our of rock forcing its way through the short green turf. havresacs, and our guns on cur shoulders; the odds The forest was mostly birch with a few maples and are, we knock over grouse and wild fowl by the way sycamores, and here and there a fir, but every tree big enough to supply us nobly. And even if we do not enough for a timber stick had long ago been floated meet with sport, we shall at all events have a plea- down to the boom at Christiansand. The character sant pic-nicking trip, and see something of the coun- of the whole scene was prettyness rather than try, while the Parson, who is so fond of open air, beauty. The mountains, however, were no lower may indulge himself with sleeping under a tree, and than they had been further down the river; it was contemplating the moon at his ease. as if their perpendicular sides had in some antediluTorkel, who had come up while they were watch-vian age given way, and that in the course of ing Jacob's progress, and had learnt their plans, centuries the fragments had become covered with informed them of a sœter which lay nearly in their proposed course, and in which he had himself often received hospitality.

"Well, then," said the Captain, “that will do for us, and we will leave the Parson, if he prefers it,

"His hollow tree,

His crust of bread and liberty."'"

"You may laugh," said the Parson, "but the time will come when you will find out certain disagreeables in a Norwegian dwelling, which may make you think with less contempt on the hollow tree."

"The Parson is of the same mind as the Douglas,"

trees and verdure.

Among these broken pieces of mountain it was exremely easy for the traveller to lose his way; there

* The lower part of the Torjedahl is perfectly free from

musquitoes, which cannot be said of all the rivers in Nor

way; this probably is owing to its rapidity, and to the

absence of all tributaries and still water.

It is no inaccuracy to give Birger a Scotch song, for there is a considerable infusion of Scotch blood among the Swedes, and Scotch family names are to be met with even

in their national ballads: for instance

It was young Folmer Skot
Who rode by dale and hill,
And after rides Morton of Fogelsang
Who bids him hear his will.

Much of the shrubbery appearance of the scene is produced by the numerous plants of the vaccinium tribe, the bright glossy leaves of which look like myrtle; and the blue aconite, and the gentian, and the lily of the valley, flowers which we seldom meet with in England absolutely wild; and the familiar leaves of the raspberry, and black currant suggest ideas of home, while the turf on which the traveller treads looks as if it had been mown by the gardener that very morning.

The course, though varied by quite as many ups and downs as there were ins and outs, was, upen the whole, continually ascending, and, as the higher regions were attained, and the facilities of transport diminished, the tall stately fir began to assert his natural supremacy among the northern sylva. Still, however, there was enough of birch, and even of the softer woods, to diversify the foliage, and preserve the park-like aspect. Heather, of which the Parson had anticipated making his couch, there was none; but, on the other hand, there was a furze to irritate the shins, or brambles to tear the clothes. The latter does grow in Norway, and is much more prized for its fruit than either raspberry or strawberry, but the former cannot stand the winters. Linnæus is said to have sat for hours in delighted contemplation of an English field of furze in full bloom, and the plant is generally seen in Swedish conservatories to this day, or set out in pots as oranges and myrtles are with us.

The mid-day sun had scattered the clouds of the morning, as in truth it very generally does in a Norway summer day, and, shining down in patches of brilliant light through the openings, added to the beauty of the scene, and diminished in an equal proportion all regrets at leaving the Torjedahl behind, for it was quite evident that, except at the Hell Fall or the pools, little or nothing could be done on so right a day, had the baulks been entirely out of the question.

It was an hour or two past noon when they arrived at the ridge which divides the valley of the Torjedahl from that of the Aalfjer-not that ridge is the proper expression, for the ground had for some miles become so nearly level that were it not for a little rill, whose line of rushes had been for some time their guide, they would not have known whether they were ascending or descending. The country still preserved its character of beauty, but its features had gradually become more tame, so that the inequalities which in the beginning of their journey had looked

like fragments of mountains, were now rounded and that it contained no young juniper or other uncomfort-yet-he could hardly have had time to get sober so regular, like so many gigantic mole-hills.

able bedding. Roused by Torkel's observation, he
sat upright, and seeing nothing very remarkable ex-
cept a good rood of lilies of the valley at his feet, the
scent of which he had been unconsciously enjoying,
and which did not look at all terrible, stared at him.
"Well," said he, "what is the matter? where should
we be lying?"

Between two of these, the turf on which was green and unbroken to the summit, and shorter and more velvety, if that were possible, than any they had passed over, was the source of the rill, a black, boggy, rushy, uninviting bit of ground, but covered with myrica bushes, which diffused through the still air their peculiarly aromatic and refreshing scent; in the centre of this was a deep still hole-it could be called nothing else—it certainly was not a spring head, for there was not a bubble of springing water; it was perfectly still and motionless, and looked abso-am determined," and he took a piece of clay that was lutely black in its clearness.

It was a welcome halt to all, for the sun was hot and the way was long. The well-head was a noted haunt of the dwarfs or Trolls, indeed it was said to penetrate to the centre of the earth, and to be the passage through which they emerged to upper air.

"I do not know," said Torkel, "that is, I do not know for certain; but did you not say you heard stammers. Stay," he said, looking as if he had resolved to do some desperate deed—“yes, I will, I

sticking on his right boot, and having patted it into
the size of a half-crown, put it on his head and
dashed his hat on over it. Then shading his eyes
with his hand, he looked fixedly at the hill, as if he
were trying to look through it. "No," said he, "I
do not see anything, I hope and trust you are
mistaken."
"What can you be about?" said the Parson impa-
tiently, "have you found a brandy shop in the
forest?"

This was the reason why, though everything around was scorching and drooping in the withering heat, and though the unshaded sun fell full upon the unprotected surface, the water was at all times very cold, and yet in the hardest winter no ice ever formed upon it-its cold was that of the well of Urdar, which" waters the roots of Yggdrassil, the tree of life; no frost can bind these waters, neither can they be polluted with leaves or sticks, for a dwarf sits continu

ally on guard there, to keep open the passage for his

brethren.

"Well," said Birger, "I can readily believe that these are the waters of life, I never met with anything so refreshing, it beats all the brandy in the

universe."

The Captain was proceeding to wash his face and hands in the well-head, but the men begged him not to pollute it, the rill below, they said, did not so much signify.

The place had been noted by Birger for a halt, and right glad were they all to disembarrass themselves of their respective loads, and to stretch themselves in various attitudes of repose, picturesque enough upon the whole, under the great white polars whose restless leaves fluttered over head, though no one could feel the breeze that stirred them, and shaded the fairy precincts of the haunted well.

The Parson threw himself on his back upon the turf with his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt-collar wide open, his arms extended, and his neckerchief, which he had removed, spread over his face and bare neck to keep off the musquitoes. He was not asleep exactly, nor, strictly speaking, could it be said that he was awake; he was enjoying that quiet dreamy sort of repose, that a man thoroughly appreciates after walking for five or six hours on a burning hot summer's day. His blood was still galloping through his veins, and he was listening to the beat of his own pulses.

"This is very delightful, very," he said, in a drowsy drawling voice, speaking rather to himself than to Torkel. "A very curious sound, one, two, three, it sounds like distant hammers."

"I thought it must be the Bjergfolk," he said,
when you heard the hammers. I never can hear
them myself, because I was not born on a Saturday,
and I thought perhaps you might have been. It is a
very round hill too, just the sort of place they would

choose, and they have not a great deal of choice now-
adays, there are so many bells in the churches, and
the Trolls cannot live within the sound of bells."
"No?" said the Parson, "why not?"
"None of the spirits of middle earth like bells,"
said Torkel, "neither Alfs, nor Nisses, nor Nechs,
nor Trolls, they do not like to think of man's salva-
tion. Bells call people to church, and that is where
neither Troll nor Alf may go. They are sometimes
very spiteful about it, too."

"In the good old times, when it was Norway and
Denmark, and we were not tied to those hogs of
Swedes as we are now" (sinking his voice, out of re-
spect to Birger, but by no means so much so that
Birger could not hear him), "they were building a
church at Knud. They pitched upon a highish mound
near the river, on which to build it, because they
wanted the people to see their new church, little
thinking that the mound was the house of a Troll,
and that on St. John's eve, it would stand open, sup-
ported on real pillars. Well, the Troll, who must
have been very young and green, could not make out
what they were going to do with his hill, and he had
no objection whatever to a house being built upon it,
because he reckoned upon a good supply of gröd and
milk from the dairy. He could have seen but very
little of the world above the turf not to know a church
from a house. However, he had no suspicions, and
the bells were put up, and the Pröbst came to conse-
crate. The poor Troll could not bear to see it, so he
rushed out into the wide world, and left his goods
and his gold and his silver behind him.

"The next day a peasant going home from the consecration saw him weeping and wringing his “Oh, the Thousand!" said Torkel, "where are we hands beyond the hearing of the bells, which was as

lying?"

The Parson, when he threw himself down on the hill side, had been a great deal too hot and tired to pay much attention to his couch, beyond the evident fact that the turf was very green and inviting, and

near as he could venture to come. And the Troll
told him that he was obliged to leave his country, and
could never come back, and asked him to take a
letter to his friends.

soon after the ceremony; but somehow or other he did not see that the speaker was a Troll, but took him for some poor fellow who had had a misfortune, and had killed some one, and fancied he was afraid of the Landamptman, particularly as he had told him not to give the letter to any one (indeed it had no direction), but to leave it in the churchyard of the new church, where the owner would find it.

"One would naturally wish to befriend a poor fellow in such a strait; so the man took the letter, put it into his pocket, and turned back.

"He had not gone far before he felt hungry, so he took out a bit of flat bröd and some smoked cod that he had put into his pocket. They were all wet. He did not know how that could be; but he took out the letter for fear it should be spoiled, and then found that there was wet oozing out from under the seal. He wiped it; but the more he wiped it, the wetter it was. At last, in rubbing, he broke the scal, and he was glad enough to run for it then, for the water came roaring out of the letter like the Wigelands Foss, and all he could do he could only And there it is to this day. I have seen it myself just keep before it till it had filled up the valley.

fact was, the Troll had packed up a lake in the

-a large lake as big as our Forres Vand. The

letter, and would have drowned church, bells, and all, if he had only sealed it up a little more carefully."

"Well," said the Parson, "this beats our pennypost; we send queer things by that ourselves, but I do not think anybody has ever yet thought of sending a lake through the General Post Office."

"Is there not some story about Hercules cleaning out the Admiralty, or some such place, in a very similar way?" said the Captain.

"No," said the Parson, "I never heard that the

Admiralty has ever been cleaned out at all since the days of Pepys. If ever it is done, though, it must be in some such wholesale way as this-I do not know anything else that will do it."

"The hill-men are not such bad fellows, though," said Tom, on whom all this by-play about the Admiralty was quite lost, British seaman as he was, "and, by the way, Torkel, I wish you would not call them by their names, you know they do not like it, and may very well do us a mischief before we get clear of this field. Many people say that there is no certainty of their being damned after all -our schoolmaster thinks they certainly will not, for he says he cannot find anything about damning Trolls in the Bible, and I am sure I hope it will not be found necessary to damn them, for they often do us a good turn. There was a Huusbonde in the Tellemark who had one of their hills on his farın that no one had ever made any use of, and he made up his mind to speak to the Troll about it. So he waited till St. John's eve came round and the hill was open, and then he went, and sure enough he found the Bjergman. He seemed a good-humored fellow enough, but he was not so rich as most of them; he had only a very few copper vessels in his hill and hardly any silver.

"Herr Bjergman,' said the Huusbonde, 'you do not seem to be in a very good case, neither am I, but I think we may make something of this hill of yours "I suppose the man's senses were rather muzzy between us-I say between us, for, you know, the

top of the soil belongs to me, just as the under soil out," said Torkel, "but I think we Norwegians preserved by a miracle, not by a trumpery trick. belongs to you.' know how to handle them, and so do our gallant Esberne Snorre, indeed; or any Dane, for matter of "Aye, aye!' said the Bjergman, 'I should like friends the Danes. Did you ever hear how Kallend- that! A set of infidels? It is only a Swede who that very well. What do you propose?" borg Church was built?" would give his eyes for the church."